Editing Arthur Wing Pinero (section)

===Reputation===
In 1906, ''The Times'' commented:
:When Mr. Pinero is at his best we reckon ourselves as close upon the high water mark of theatrical enjoyment.  … This or that playwright may show more "heart" than Mr. Pinero or a more delicate subtlety, a third may easily outclass him in intellectual gymnastic, but in his command of the resources of the stage for the legitimate purposes of the stage he is without a rival. As it was said of Euripides that he was τραγικώτατος, the most tragic of the tragic writers, as it might be said of Molière that he was the most comic of comic writers, so it may be said of Mr. Pinero that of all our dramatists to-day he is the most "dramatic". The art of drama is, quintessentially, the art of story-telling, as the sculptors say, "in the round". Mr. Pinero is supreme as a story-teller of that sort. We are always keenly interested in what his people are doing at the moment; we always have the liveliest curiosity about what they are going to do a moment later.<ref>"St James's Theatre, ''The Times'', 2 February 1906, p. 4</ref>

By the time of Pinero's death in 1934 the paper had become less enthusiastic. Both ''The Times'' and ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' published polite obituaries that respectfully relegated his works to a bygone era.<ref>Dawick, p. 374</ref> For twenty years after his death Pinero's reputation remained in what Dawick calls "a state of near-eclipse". From the 1950s onwards interest in his Court farces grew. In a 1972 study of the playwright, Walter Lazenby wrote, "Pinero cannot be outranked as a farceur by any other English writer; not even Shakespeare consistently expended on this form the care and art which went into the Court Theatre farces or achieved such thoroughly satisfying results".<ref>Lazenby, p. 155</ref> Reviewing the book, the academic Robert Ronning agreed that the farces were Pinero's most enduring works:
:The fact that students will continue to read ''The Second Mrs Tanqueray'' instead of ''The Magistrate'' does not mean much except for what they learn about craftsmanship, and this could be learned equally well from the farces. ... While we have seen considerable interest in the field of nineteenth century drama in recent years, one doubts if Pinero's social and problem plays will ever catch on.<ref>Ronning, Robert. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3206101 "Arthur Wing Pinero by Walter Lazenby], ''Educational Theatre Journal'', October 1974, pp. 415–416 {{subscription required}}</ref>
In 2012 the director [[Stephen Unwin (director)|Stephen Unwin]] wrote:

:One of the most heartening developments in recent years has been the critical rehabilitation of the oft-scorned giants of the commercial theatre. Thus Coward has been revealed as an English Chekhov and Rattigan as the supreme explorer of the hidden heart. But neither would have been possible without Pinero, whose surprisingly moving, amazingly theatrical and deeply humane plays still have the power to astonish and delight 100 years after they first created such a stir.<ref>Unwin, Stephen. [https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/1416320009D03CD0"Pinero: forgotten funnyman of the Victorian theatre]", ''The Independent'' 18 September 2012 {{subscription required}}</ref>